Winter brings its own set of challenges for exercising your dog.  Around these parts it’s dark by the time I get home.

Sometimes we get really icky weather (last night was misty and foggy.)  I’m pretty stalwart when it comes to walking the dogs but sometimes it’s just not possible to get out and walk them.

What do you do?

I’ve written in the past about how I like to deviate the dog’s exercise schedule.  Personally I feel it’s important that they not only get walks, but they get different types of physical and mental stimulation as well.

My dog is just as tired after an hour of obedience, agility or tricks class as she is after a nice long walk.

On weekends when we are home all day and Sampson and Delilah are awake more, or on holidays when we have family around they get less sleep than they do during the week, which means they are just as tired as if they’d walked for hours.

Mental stimulation can be equally tiring.

Just as I find exercising during the winter challenging, I find it equally challenging to squeeze training into my already busy day.

Which is why I try to add a little bit of training to our daily routine.

My dogs are really great at sitting.  We make them sit on the edges of the kitchen while we work in the kitchen either preparing their meals or ours.

We make them sit when a car approaches while on our walk.

Delilah’s always been a challenge when it comes to the down command, for some reason she’s reluctant to down and has a problem staying there as well.

I work her down, in the bathroom while I’m getting ready for work in the morning.

 

This past weekend I decided to try a paws up on one of the fallen logs on the trail.

I stood on the opposite side of the log as her, and held the treat down low.  She tried to grab the treat without putting her paws on the log, but I pulled it away.  We worked this for about a minute before she understood what I was requesting of her.

The next time we approached the log and I said, Paw’s Up, she actually held it so I could take a picture.

 

I’m not quite sure what’s up with that expression, she doesn’t look happy to me, but then again paws up wasn’t HER idea.

How do you deviate your schedule when weather just won’t let you do what you want?

Did you ever wake up in a great mood and then have something miniscule happen that turned everything sour?

If you have labs you know they’re sloppy drinkers.  Delilah is the worst.  She sticks her face in the water, and raises it dripping from the bowl and then she walks away, taking the water with her.

Yesterday morning in the midst of my daily rituals I got a pant leg soaked with water.

 

The combination of cold/wet startled me, I looked at Delilah and said through gritted teeth, “Delilah!”

Such a miniscule occurrence that got me thinking of personal struggles and the seemingly small incidents which wear us down.

I think in most relationships (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) we weather the big stuff.  We somehow manage the financial struggles, the differences of opinions, the illnesses, yet it is the small things that truly wear us down. The underwear that doesn’t quite make it to the hamper, the toothpaste in the sink.

I can manage to remain calm when Delilah runs off on a  walk or won’t perform a trick as quickly as I’d like, but dribble water on my pants and I lose my mind.

This was the train of thought I had in the morning.

By evening it had evolved into the whole nature vs nurture theory.  If we’d gotten Delilah at eight weeks old like we did Sampson would she still be a vacuum when she ate, would she come when she was called, would she not slobber at the water bowl?

Then I sat down to write the post and I couldn’t put it all together.  I sat on the couch with my laptop, I checked my e-mail, I checked facebook, still the post remained unwritten.

I looked over at the dogs, Sampson wanted to play, he put his paw on Delilah’s head and it was so cute, it reminded me of a father, patting a child’s head.

I grabbed the camera and missed it!

So I sat there watching the dogs play and snapping pictures.

I love watching the two of them play, one of them has the toy and the other one tries to get it away.  They both have their mouths on the toy.  It reminded me of the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp.

 

 

Then Delilah put her paw over Sampson’s eyes.

 

That was my post for the day.

And then Delilah and I went to tricks class.

I readily admit, we did not practice our tricks at all last week, with the exception being to show Hubby what we’d learned when we got home.

Come on, I mean it was Thanksgiving and a long weekend to boot.

So we went back to class, a bit rusty, yet Delilah still did great with her roll over.

We were shown how to teach three new tricks this week, Spin, Bow and Say Your Prayers.

Delilah got spin almost immediately, of course it helped that besides the banana chips I had some stinky white fish in my pocket.

Bow was hard and our instructor Ariane told us three different ways to train/lure it.  The easiest way is to catch your dog doing the behavior and reward for it.  I’ve been saying “Good Bow” to Delilah every time I catch her at it, but it’s never been treated.  (I’ve got to start stashing treats all over the place so I can treat her when she does it.)

Ariane came over to help me and she almost had her into a bow once, but it just wasn’t a trick Delilah learned easily.

When it came time to teach Say Your Prayers, Ariane asked if she could use Delilah and I finally confessed to her that I wrote a blog and asked if I could take pictures. 🙂 She said, Sure!

First Ariane lured Delilah onto a chair using her Paws Up command.

 

Then she lured her into a Shame on You, which is simply placing her head flat on the floor (in this case the chair.)

 

Because Delilah is a bigger dog, Ariane stuck her hand through the back of the chair and lured Delilah in that manner.  For smaller dogs, you could just place your hand (with the treat in it) on the chair.

By the end of class, she was doing a decent imitation of Say Your Prayers.

And that my friends is the evolution of a blog post.

Has your post ever evolved in an unexpected way?  How do you conquer writer’s block?